I visited a new/used bookstore today (there’s an interesting mural on the store’s east-wall, and a cat named Buddha inside); after twelve minutes I was sure I wouldn’t find anything I liked but didn’t have, and then I saw a first-edition hardback of Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian.

Years ago I bought  Return to Painting (India ink on rice paper). Soul Mountain is mentioned on Return to Painting’s cover, which also noted that Gao Xingjian was the first Chinese-language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I also found a first-edition hardback of Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle, which I read when it first came out (1980). I’m hesitant to re-read it (the cover art is gaudy, though I suppose a vast majority of that genre’s books have a similar affliction…); a lot of innocence has disappeared as I’ve aged.